News

Ruark & Wyatt is working with the Nordson Corporation on two projects to expand and renovate facilities at Nordson's Adhesive Dispensing Division in John's Creek, Georgia.

The projects involve a 68,400 square-foot expansion and subsequent 102,240 square-foot renovation of Nordson's existing facility. The expansion will house employees and operations that are being consolidated from other Nordson locations. The renovation includes building new conference rooms and updating finishes throughout the facility. The construction is underway with an expected completion date in early 2012.

For more info, look for the Nordson projects on the Projects page in the Industrial category and Corporate Interiors category.

All American Container recently moved into its new home in East Point, Georgia after construction wrapped up in August of 2011. Ruark & Wyatt Architects designed the 61,000 square-foot office/distribution center, located in Duke Realty's Camp Creek Park. The building is RWA's seventh project for Duke Realty at Camp Creek.

All American Containers is one of the largest U.S. suppliers of glass, plastic and metal containers, tubes, dispensers and closures.

Georgia's Lieutenant Governor Casey Cagle helped IVC US celebrate the grand opening of its new U.S. headquarters in Dalton, Georgia in May, 2011. The 443,000-square-foot facility houses the Belgian company's U.S. corporate offices, as well as a manufacturing plant that boasts the world's largest vinyl flooring manufacturing line, capable of producing over 30 million square meters of vinyl flooring a year. Ruark & Wyatt provided architectural and interior design services for the facility—officially dubbed "Project Stella"—and performed construction administration.

The design of the production hall posed challenges in its layout and construction. The production line is so long that the rolls of flooring and the machinery must make a U-turn at the end of the building, halfway through the production process. The floors and foundations were designed to meet the client's specs for "zero differential settlement tolerance" to allow for precise alignment between a series of 12 connected printing rollers. To enable the accurate functioning of the weighing hoppers, the floors were designed to L/750 deflection criteria.

The project includes 4,000 tons of central plant cooling capacity and redundant 12 mega-watt electrical service, as well as an array of 42,000 square feet of solar panels.

Click Video for start-to-finish time-lapse video footage of the construction of IVC's manufacturing facility.

For more images, look for the IVC project on the Projects page and check out the Image Gallery.

Grainger Industrial Supply and RWA have worked together to achieve LEED certification for multiple projects. Back in 2008, Grainger was the first industrial distributor to have a LEED-certified facility. Three Louisiana Grainger stores, both designed by Ruark & Wyatt, earned LEED Gold certification in October, 2008. Since then, RWA has teamed with Grainger on two additional stores in Louisiana; every store has achieved LEED Gold certification. As of 2011, Grainger now operates 12 LEED facilities around the U.S. and Mexico.

With a total of five LEED Gold projects in Louisiana alone, Grainger currently has more LEED facilities in Louisiana than any other organization. The Louisiana chapter of the AIA recruited RWA principal Kevin Wyatt to speak about LEED design at the 2010 AIA Design Conference where he presented the seminar "Sustainable Design Case Studies."

Ruark & Wyatt has seen a promising increase in manufacturing projects in Georgia. Over the past year RWA has handled new buildings and expansions for three manufacturing companies in Georgia.

The first project, IVC US, is open for business in Dalton after construction was completed in early 2011. The IVC project includes a vinyl flooring production facility as well as corporate offices, showroom, and warehouse. IVC is already considering expansion of the facility to allow them to store more raw materials to accommodate a second production shift.

RWA has completed design of the second project, a new manufacturing facility for SCHÜTZ Container Systems, Inc. in Barrow County. SCHÜTZ manufactures IBCs (intermediate bulk containers), plastic drums, and steel drums to transport liquids and other goods. The design for the SCHÜTZ plant includes expansions that can be phased in over time.

The third project is an expansion for Atlanta-based MRI (Manufacturing Resources International). MRI produces LED advertising signage and kiosks. Ruark & Wyatt completed designs for an expansion to MRI's existing manufacturing facility, including an overhead bridge crane and an internal dock well. The design more than doubled the size of the facility. MRI is experiencing such rapid growth that their space needs outgrew the newly planned expansion before it was built. They ended up purchasing an existing building that was more than double the size of the design for their expanded facility.